Brazil
Indian, Brazilian, and South African business leaders have identified key issues that have to be addressed to allow the more rapid development of broader and deeper economic relations between the three countries.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday spoke strongly in favour of the newly emerging trilateral co-operation between India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA), saying all three countries stand to benefit from it in working for their energy security, creating synergies in trade and technology and in enhanced transport connectivity.
President Thabo Mbeki says IBSA’s (India-Brazil-South Africa’s) time has arrived to make a mark on world trade. He was addressing the IBSA summit in Brazil and called on developing nations to form strong partnerships and strategic alliances in the wake of the recent collapse of the Doha round of trade talks.
IBSA will be a powerful bloc in south-south cooperation with echoes of ‘non-alignment’ in earlier times but from the economic point of view, IBSA is a little fictitious” was Union minister of state for commerce Jairam Ramesh’s reported take on this regional formation that includes India-Brazil-South Africa just ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Brazil and Cuba to attend an IBSA and NAM summit.
The controversy over the impact of bilateral trade agreements on public health poses particular difficulties for the Geneva-based WHO, which is gearing up for the highly political election of a new director-general.
The US government’s announcement that it will review the possibility of limiting, suspending, or withdrawing trade preferences under the General System of Preferences (GSP) to three Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela—is political pressure to make these nations participate in the model of regional integration proposed by the United States.
In this interview, Raúl Zibechi discusses the challenges of the Evo Morales administration in Bolivia, the power and role of Bolivian social movements, projects for regional integration such as People’s Trade Agreement and the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the region’s new situation after the electoral victories of various "progressive" governments.
During the triangular IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) political summit on September 13 in Brazil, Mercosur is likely to propose South African Customs Union (SACU) and India the creation of a working group to explore the modalities of a trilateral free trade agreement (T-FTA) among them.
Brazil requested Portugal to support an agreement between the Southern Common Market and European Union.
Brazil Trade and Industry Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan said Monday that Mexico could join the South American trade block Mercosur within a year.
Brazil proposed in Montevideo a “new deal” for Mercosur and requested a “credit of confidence” from Uruguay, which has bitterly complained about the group’s functioning and is moving closer to United States.
When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attends the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) summit in Brazil on September 13, one of the main issues on the agenda is the possibility of a trilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the regional groupings in Latin America and South Africa.
The Ministers of Health of ten South American countries issued a
joint declaration on intellectual property committing themselves to
avoid "TRIPS plus" provisions in bilateral and regional trade agreements,
to facilitate the use of compulsory licensing and parallel importing and to
avoid broadening the scope of patentability and the extension of
patentable areas.
COPA the Panamanian airline is now flying the Brazilian company Embraer’s E-190 commercial airliners on routes previously dominated by Boeing 737s. This detail highlights broader shifts in the economic balance of power in Latin America away from United States corporations.
Although India, Brazil, and South Africa share bilateral trade agreements amongst themselves, binding trilateral free trade arrangements between the countries are not an option at the present time because of previously signed multinational agreements involving their neighboring nations.
India announced that it is evolving an agreement in maritime shipping within IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) and working out modalities to implement the framework agreement in civil aviation in the region. It cautioned, however, that since Brazil and South Africa were members of MERCOSUR and SACU, there were constraints in working out a trilateral FTA within the IBSA framework.
Mercosur is becoming more of a political body than a free-trade advocacy group.
It’s Bush vs. Chavez as 33 heads of state meet Friday for Summit of the Americas.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) will become a reality only if the United States allows increased market access for Brazilian agriculture and competitive manufactures and if Brazil reciprocates by opening its market to foreign competition in goods and services.
The talks on a future Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) have divided Latin American states into different interest groups prior to the 4th Summit of the Americas to be held in Argentina on Nov. 4-5.
